


Enjoy the silence

by Zombieheroine



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Episode, Bunker Fic, Fluff, Human Castiel, M/M, Season 9
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-29 00:50:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/998893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zombieheroine/pseuds/Zombieheroine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel is slowly making his way to the bunker and the Winchesters.</p>
<p>Every once in awhile, when an opportunity presents itself, he gives Dean a call.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enjoy the silence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beekeepercain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beekeepercain/gifts).



> So... The new season. THE PREMIERE. It gave me a lot of feelings, so I wrote a short fluffy destiel fic.
> 
> This fic is a gift to Chakatai, my darling friend, because he is the friend who shares a fandom and is obsessed enough. Here you go, darling!

Who would have guessed three people in the bunker would be a swarm? It was, anyway. Just Dean and Sam, no problem, but with Kevin adding up from two to three seemed to shrink the bunker down considerably. Maybe it was all the stress, maybe it was how the food in the fridge disappeared way faster than it used to, but Dean found himself climbing walls in no time.

He didn't know where to go, how to be and what to talk about and even the peace of his own room wasn't enough to calm him down. For some brief moments it was, but in the end the space was rather small, he couldn't store up much food there without a fridge, and it wasn't like he could just lock himself into his room and stay there. It would have been immature and, most of all, suspicious. Everything was supposed to be alright now, for a change, he couldn't just go and ruin it.

But Dean came to realize that he couldn't look Sam in the eye for a very long time. In all truth, he couldn't look at his brother at all, especially not at his face, without something cold and nasty crawling up from the bottom of his stomach and starting to squeeze his lungs. He tried to keep telling himself that he had just saved his brother, done it for Sam, but whatever he tried to convince himself with, the cold and nasty just squeezed harder. Dean refused to look at the truth right in front of him, and instead turned his head away from it. It made him anxious, and this manifested itself as irritability. He kept glaring and snapping without a good reason, and apologizing in the same breath.  
Sam was worried, but his exhaustion triumphed the worry, and he just decided to leave Dean alone and retired to the library.

Kevin noticed right away something was wrong, and he was more suspicious and forward about it than Sam. At first he didn't mention it, simply kept glancing between the brothers, adding one to one and coming out with three, and strictly keeping any comments to himself. Then, one morning, he managed to corner Dean in the kitchen while getting more pancakes.

”So, what's up with you and Sam?” he asked like it was no big deal and kept spooning sugar from a jar to his plate.  
”What? What are you talking about?” Dean snapped, alarmed, and almost knocked the frying pan off the stove.  
Kevin gave him a knowing look. ”You know what I'm talking about. You are jumpy and irritated as hell. Something's not right here. Sam doesn't know about it. So what is it?”  
Dean stared at him, brow furrowing and jaw clenching. ”I don't know what you're talking about,” he managed to say flatly.  
Kevin raised a brow and shrugged at him. ”Yeah, right,” he huffed and picked up his now full plate. ”But it's not going to just disappear, no matter how hard you ignore it. You know that.”  
Dean forced out a dismissive laugh. ”And when did you become so wise and mature, kid?”  
One corner of Kevin's mouth twitched a bit, and he shrugged again. ”I have my moments.”

After that short encounter he didn't confront Dean again, but the air of suspicion around him grew stronger. At times, Dean caught Kevin staring at him, and he could almost see the wheels turning in his head and definitely feel the burden of guilt getting heavier.

So he started to avoid Kevin as well, and Kevin seemed to return the favor by starting to spend more time with Sam in the library. Dean itched to know what they were talking about or if they were talking at all, but in the end he was just relieved he could come out of his room and not see anyone around and didn't want to do anything to tip that balance.

Dean wished he had something physical to do. Researching wasn't really his thing, but there wasn't much of anything else to do. The angels were scattered and after the little conflict in the hospital, Dean and Sam had heavily agreed on it being a very bad idea to try to seek them out. So instead, they randomly yanked books and scrolls from the shelves and crammed about angels and their powers, old strong demons, theories about dimensions and the whole gate-system, and anything more or less relevant. Dean liked to read and he was fairly skilled with noticing the important points, but now he didn't have an actual goal which made the research seem all the more pointless. The situation wasn't going anywhere, so Dean didn't really know what he was looking for and what he wanted to use it for. Knowing that just about anything could turn out to be useful was demotivating instead of liberating.

After only two and half weeks in bunker, there was only one thing that lightened up Dean's life which was going steadily downhill, and it was the phone calls.

Cas didn't really have the opportunities or pocket money to just make random calls, but every once in a while he managed. Dean was relieved Cas had memorized his cell number, and when just a two-minute call from a pay phone somewhere was enough to light a candle-like flame of comfort in his chest, Dean begun to look forward to his cell ringing. He couldn't remember ever feeling his heart making a hopeful little jump when he heard a phone ring.

”Hello, Dean.”  
”Hi, Cas! Where are you?”  
”On a gas station, somewhere along this highway going from... Uh, I don't actually know. But I think I have been walking in the right direction. This is slow, that's all.”  
”Walking? You think you can just walk a few hundred miles?” Dean asked, disbelieving but also amused.  
”Of course I can. You used to walk, too. Before you invented faster means of transport,” came the answer. Castiel sounded fond, even under his obvious exhaustion.  
Dean smiled. ”I bet you understand now why. Don't your feet ache?”

Faint rattling came from the other end of the line, and Dean imagined how Castiel shifted his weight and passed the phone from one hand to the other. ”Yes, they do. But I'm not entirely sure what is from walking, what is from lack of food and what is from sleep deprivation. All these requirements for bodily upkeep is very time consuming.”

Dean smiled to himself, but the smile had a melancholic note in it. ”You will get used to it. Just... can you get food and water anywhere? Water is important, especially when you're on the move.”

He heard rustling of clothes, and he closed his eyes so he could imagine Castiel checking his environment for threats.  
”Water will not be a problem, and neither will food for a while. I will be fine.”

”Of course you will,” Dean heard himself to say. He didn't like the tone of his voice. It was too gentle to really fit him. He cleared his throat, but didn't have anything else to add.

They listened to each other's breathing, and to his surprise Dean didn't feel silly or uncomfortable about it. He could just focus on Cas, and that he was there. Dean thought that there was one good thing coming out of this, and it was that now Castiel couldn't just go and disappear on him when he turned around. He felt warm from head to toe, but the crushing guilt followed one heartbeat later.

”I'm running out of minutes, Dean,” Castiel said apologetically.

Dean opened his eyes, and couldn't remember when he had allowed them to close. ”Uh, yeah. Okay. I... Good luck, Cas.”

”Dean?” Castiel .

”Yeah?”  
”I'm coming to you.”

*

On the days Castiel didn't call Dean tended to space out. He wondered where exactly Cas was at that very moment, how he was holding up and if he was alright. If he simply kept a low profile, it was an extremely slim chance that any of his vengeful siblings would find him, but Dean worried none the less. From worry his train of thought usually proceeded steadily to daydreaming of actual face-to-face conversations with Castiel. On the phone he sounded like he actually had decided to follow Dean's advice and take care of himself, but Dean felt uneasy without witnessing it himself.

He thought of basic human things a lot, things he took for granted but worried Castiel wouldn't realize he now needed. Dean wanted to be there to hand him a bottle of water and remind him it was important to drink. He wanted to ease his anxiety when he grew tired and needed to sleep. If he allowed himself to drift even further into his daydream, he imagined letting Cas try some of his own cooking.

Whenever Dean allowed himself to drift that deep, he snapped out of it quickly and rather violently. Usually he found himself blankly staring down at a book page without any idea what it said, but several pages from where he had started reading.  
Sometimes in the dining room he actually twitched, lifted his gaze and was oddly disappointed when he didn't see Castiel sitting there across the table.

Dean came to know he had only things he'd rather ignore than think about. Avoiding others allowed him to run from one problem, but being just by himself left him with the problems of more personal kind, leaving him cornered.  
He had always known he was a mess, but at the moment some issue started to actively involve anyone else than just himself, it becamse a pain to deal with.

He thought a lot of the last few years and the amounts of shit that had gone down. He thought of all those really tight spots he had somehow survived. He thought of the people he had met and befriended. Thinking about Benny made his chest ache.

Thinking Benny made him think about Purgatory, which now felt like a last week's nightmare, blurry and unreal. He had only wanted to find Cas and drag him out of there with him, and there hadn't been room for anything else in his mind. He hadn't felt hunger, thirst or fatigue, he had stopped only to pray.

Dean threw a hopeful glance at his phone on the table, but it just sat there, its screen dark.

Dean missed Cas. There was nothing he could do to distract himself from the feeling, nor do anything to alleviate the pain as it gnawed on his insides. A phone call would be just first aid to it, like pressing a tissue on a wound when you actually needed stitches. It would help to prevent the mess, but after a while the tissue would be soaked and useless, and you'd have to get a new one.  
Dean absentmindedly rubbed his chest, trying to ease the hollow ache he got when he thought of Cas too much. The moment he allowed himself to remember not only the fallen angel's voice, but also his smile, awkward gestures, the way he tilted his head and squinted his eyes when he thought Dean was being absurd, he felt like a void had opened inside his chest, cold and dark and empty.

The book lay on the table long forgotten, and Dean pressed the heels his palms to his eyes until he saw little bright spots in the darkness.

 

A week passed without a word from Castiel.

Dean presumed the other had finally run out of quarters, hopefully after buying food or a pair of new socks. He stubbornly refused to listen to the more pessimistic side of his mind throwing terrible what-ifs at him. The bunker's map would have shown activity nearby if something had happened, and Dean outright refused to think things like a simple car accidents. That would have been absurd; wings or not, Cas was still an angel, and angels didn't just get hit by cars.

Dean was making coffee in the kitchen, when his phone rang.  
The phone was on the dining table, and he darted to get it after literally dropping everything he was holding at the moment when his ears caught the first note of his ring-tone. The coffee maker was left filled with water but open and without the coffee grounds.

Sam was coming down the stairs just in time to laugh at Dean, who was running with the ringing cell phone tightly held against his chest towards his room and the solitude it offered. Dean was too much in a hurry to even throw a death glare at his brother, and he was let out of the hook for now. Dean would get his revenge on that mocking laugh later. Perhaps. If he'd remember.

As soon as the door closed behind him, he answered: ”Cas?”  
”Dean,” greeted a familiar voice. ”I was afraid you wouldn't pick up.”

Dean threw himself on his bed, cradling the cell carefully to his ear.  
”Sorry about that. I was in the kitchen, and didn't want anyone to listen from the side, so I came to my room. So how are you holding up?”  
”I'm managing. I'm sorry I haven't called you in a few days.”  
”Don't you worry about that, 'k? It's fine,” Dean assured him. ”But it's... It's good to hear your voice, man.”

There was a faint noise on the line, and Dean imagined Castiel puffing a quiet laugh. He imagined the smile, too, and little wrinkles around the angel's eyes.

”It's good to hear yours, too,” came the uncertain reply. ”I wanted to contact you sooner.”  
”Told you not to worry about it,” Dean sighed. ”Everything is fine. Nothing has happened, we're still manning the bunker. There's been no word of either angels or demons.”  
”That's good.” Castiel sounded relieved. ”I have tried listening to the angel radio every once in a while, but it's... It's just confused noise,” he finished with a heavy sigh.  
”You haven't tried sending a message, have you?”  
”I can't do that now,” Castiel answered sounding awkward. ”Well, I suppose I could pray, but it wouldn't be wise right now.”

Dean closed his eyes and rolled on his side. ”Yeah, low profile, Cas. Low profile. We'll sort this out together. It's going to be okay, you hear me? I'm going to make it okay to you. Just not yet. Let's pick our battles, 'k?”

He was making promises he wasn't sure he could keep, but he swore to himself he'd try as long as there was one spark of life in him. He didn't care how long it would take or how much he'd suffer on the way, but he wanted to give something to Castiel.

He could tell by the sound the other made that Cas didn't quite believe him, but was touched anyway.  
”Thank you, Dean.”  
”Hey, don't mention it. But you could pick up some groceries on your way, though,” Dean joked.  
”Sorry, I can't do that. I'm out of coins,” Castiel answered, making Dean laugh.  
Laughing felt good, like biting into a juicy fruit when you're both thirsty and hungry.

”What did you do with your last coins, anyway?” Dean asked.  
”I got a two-dollar bag on nuts. Hunger is a very unpleasant experience,” Castiel said. He sounded mildly irritated.  
”Yeah, I feel you there,” Dean chuckled. ”How is this human-thing working out, anyway?”  
The other was quiet for a long moment, either thoughtful or hesitating, Dean couldn't tell without seeing him.

”Sleeping is difficult,” the older confessed eventually.  
”Oh?”  
”It's... Frightening. It's blacking out and being completely defenseless. I feel less like myself every time I wake up.”

Dean felt a pang of painful sympathy for the fallen angel. The mess was just getting bigger and bigger all the time, and while listening to the quiet and weak ring of fear in Castiel's voice, Dean wasn't sure if anything good could come out of Cas’ newfound humanity in a long while.

”Well, if it means anything, when you find your way here, you won't have to sleep alone.”  
Dean regretted the words immediately when they left his mouth. He was babbling things he shouldn't and making a complete fool out of himself. He pushed his free hand into his hair and yanked until his eyes watered.

”I would like that very much, Dean,” came Castiel's gentle answer. His voice was soft and quiet.  
”Oh?”  
”Sharing your room would be nice,” he continued. ”Thank you.”

Dean felt his cheeks burn. Unconsciously he reached across his bed to feel the empty space next to him. He stroked the covers slowly, feeling the gaping wound-like longing inside his ribcage again. Castiel had said ”room”, not ”bed”, but his imagination didn't care for simple logic like that.

”Dean? Are you still there?”

”Yeah, I am.”

”Good. I feared for a moment I lost you.”

Dean blinked. ”No, I'm here. Don't worry. But how haven't you run out of time yet? You said you're out of coins already.”  
”Oh, I... Uh...,” Castiel hesitated, sounding slightly flustered. ”I'm not calling from a pay phone. The last gas station I stopped by was very crowded, and I managed to get my hands on a cell phone.”  
Dean laughed. ”Oh, you've been hanging around me for too long! My bad habits are rubbing on you.”  
Castiel chuckled too. ”Yes, I suppose so.”

They shared one of their comfortable silences. Dean listened to the steady static sounds of the other breathing, and imagined getting that sound into his room along with Castiel's scent, smile and warmth. He felt a warm rush in his stomach and his chest tightened, but it wasn't a bad feeling at all.

”Dean?” Castiel breathed, making sure he hadn't lost the connection.

”Yes, Cas?” Dean asked. His voice was raspy

”I need you to do something for me. Would you?”

”Yeah, anything,” Dean promised. ”Just name it.”

”Will you please come and open the door for me?”


End file.
